Spiritual Ponderings

But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, thought, "Behold, my master has spared this Naaman the Aramean, by not receiving from his hands what he brought. As the LORD lives, I will run after him and take something from him." But he went in and stood before his master. And Elisha said to him, "Where have you been, Gehazi?" And he said, "Your servant went nowhere." Then he said to him, "Did not my heart go with you, when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Is it a time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants? "Therefore, the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever." So he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow. (2 Kings 5:20, 25-27) Gehazi had an opportunity like few others to share in the ministry of a mighty prophet. He enjoyed the opportunity to being mentored like his master had be...

Introduction For centuries people have referred to the words of God given on Mt. Sinai as 'the Ten Commandments.' Yet nowhere in the Bible are they ever mentioned that way. Rather they were specifically referred to as 'the testimony.' They were likely the first physical form of a testimony of God, something we should take quite seriously. This testimony was later placed in the Ark and covered by the Mercy Seat which when assembled took on the name 'the Ark of the Testimony.' You shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you. You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I will give to you. There I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat , from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony , I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel. (Exodus 25:16, 21-22) When He had finished speaking with ...

The kingdom of heaven is about vulnerability. Jesus came to redeem the idea of vulnerability and to change our minds about its viability. Consider how many times when Jesus was on earth that He went through circumstances or told stories that would challenge our ideas about vulnerability. More than once when the disciples found themselves in a life-threatening storm on the Sea of Galilee, they experienced intense vulnerability, something they did not like or want to face. Yet Jesus allowed them to experience that so as to teach them to always bring Him into the equation and to learn to trust in His love and power so as to overcome fear in every such situation. When thousands of people found themselves very hungry with no way to obtain food readily, they felt very vulnerable which often leads people to become angry or resentful or to look for someone to blame. Jesus led them through that experience to teach that being vulnerable in this way should not upset our trust...

I have started thinking about the art of questioning. As with most everything, there is a right way and then there is a counterfeit way. In addition, there is also the factor of timing. There is a healthy time to ask questions and there are times to focus more on answers or maybe living out what we have been learning instead of stalling with excessive and debilitating questions and feeding our doubts. Some children have their questions suppressed for most of the childhood. Are these the ones who end up trying to force answers on everyone else when they become older? I grew up in a religious environment where it seemed that the only questions that were welcome were the ones that fit perfectly the stock answers that were already on file with the church. As a result I began to notice that in our attempts to gain converts to our religion we were attempting to convince 'unbelievers' that they needed to ask only the questions we wanted them to ask that would ...